News

It’s the end of another month, and time for your scheduled MAME
release, with more of everything we know you love. In a last-minute
update, we slipped in a major performance optimisation for bgfx video
output. It’s particularly noticeable when using cropped artwork, and
there’s no longer a big performance penalty for bringing up the menu
over the emulation on macOS. Another core improvement is support for
TAP/TUN networking on Windows, providing a big performance improvement
when connecting an emulated system to a network on the host machine.

From the department of things considered lost to time, MAME 0.201
allows you to play as Chuby the octopus, in the incredibly elusive
Spanish game Night Mare. Unfortunately the sound ROMs were missing, so
you won’t be able to hear Chuby speak, and we still need to be on the
lookout for the export version known as Clean Octopus. And speaking of
rare games from Spain, two more Magnet System titles have been dumped:
A Day in Space and The Burning Cavern.

Newly dumped versions of supported arcade games include prototypes of
Halley’s Comet (Taito) and Dog Fight (Orca), a newer version of the
original Master Boy (Gaelco), and the Korean release of Raiden II (Seibu
Kaihatsu). A redumped ROM allowed Psychic Force EX to run
correctly. The vgmplay logged music player has had a big update in this
release, with support for several more sound chips and a comprehensive
software list.

And this brings us to audio improvements, which seem to have all
crowded their way into this release. We have fixes for long-standing
sound bugs in Twin Eagle, Targ and Spectar. Sound in Amazing Maze is no
longer cut off after thirty seconds or so. There are some big changes
for QSound and Taito Zoom ZSG-2 that should make things sound nicer.
There’s also preliminary support for the NEC PC-FX’s HuC6230 SoundBox,
but be aware it has a DC offset so you’ll hear a big thud when you
start or stop it.

Recent improvements in NEC PC-98 emulation have seen dozens of titles
promoted to working status, and we’ve added another batch of dumps from
Neo Kobe Collection. There are a number of fixes that improve TI-99
floppy and cassette support in this release. InterPro systems can now
be used via a serial terminal in configurations without a video card or
keyboard. At long last, the Apple //c Plus can boot from its internal
floppy drive. Other improvements to computer emulation include better
keyboard support for Amiga systems, and improved GPU emulation for the
HP Integral PC.